Over a hundred young people and activists sat gripped by the words of Washington, DC's best spoken word artists and singers at Campus Progress’ annual summer event “Spoken Word: Protest Through Poetry.” The event uses the power of performance art to build political consciousness and energize youth activism.

The evening opened with Omekongo Dibinga, an anti-genocide activist and spoken word artist, who shared a poem about the injustice of conflict minerals in the Congo that are powering American cell phones.

Danielle Evennou’s set included an abecedarian —a style of poetry where verses are written with letters in the order of the alphabet —on Sarah Palin, which had choice words for her politics (and Bristol), earning the most chuckles from the crowd.

Jenny Lares, co-curator of a monthly Asian American spoken word event, Sulu DC, took apart color-blind racism in her set. An excerpt of her piece reads:

Must you always think about race?
Yes. Because whiteness made the color of my skin mean more than a difference in melanin and geography
Used to buy reasons to dominate and rape
Profile me from the very beginning as only a force for manual labor
And I can’t shut it out, or turn it off
Whether I want to or not.

The event ended with SongRise, a socially conscious, women’s a cappella group. Their voices filled the room with songs of freedom and justice. And as SongRise lifted up their own stories of activism, they helped the rest of the room refresh their commitment to this work.

Check out pictures from the event below. 

Omekongo Dibinga, a PhD student, performs a poem on the "big business" of incarcerating young people of color.

Campus Progress Advocacy Associate, Pedro de la Torre, talks about the need to pass the Dream Act while circulating a petition at the event.

Over 100 progressive youth activists, students, and professionals joined us for the event.